was simply jack-rabbit hindleg luck that pulled me
through!

My first Jones was a hoary old rascal above a drug store. He was a hard
man to get away from, and made such a fuss about my wasting his time
with idle questions that I flung him a dollar and departed. He followed
me down to my cab and insisted on sticking in a giant bottle of his
Dog-Root Tonic. I dropped it overboard a few blocks farther on, and
thought that was the end of it till the whole street began to yell at
me, and a policeman grabbed my horse, while a street arab darted up
breathless with the Dog-Root Tonic. I presented it to him, together with
a quarter, the policeman darkly regarding me as an incipient madman.

The second Jones was a man of about thirty, a nice, gentlemanly fellow,
in a fine office. I have usually been an off-hand man in business,
accustomed to quick decisions and very little beating about the bush.
But I confess I was rather nonplussed with the second Jones. How the
devil was I to _begin_? His waiting-room was full of people, and I
hardly felt entitled to sit down and gas about one thing and the other
till the chance offered of leading up to the Van Coorts. So I said I had
some queer, shooting sensations in the chest. In five minutes he had me
half-stripped and was pounding my midriff in. And the questions that man
asked! He began with my grandparents, roamed through my childhood and
youth, dissected my early manhood, and finally came down to coffee and
what I ate for breakfast.

Then it was my turn.

I asked him, as a starter, whether he had ever been in Colorado?

No, he hadn't.

After forty-five minutes of being hammered, and stethoscoped, and
punched, and holding my breath till I was purple, and hopping on one
leg, he said I was a very obscure case of something with nine syllables!

"At least, I won't be positive with one examination," he said; "but
kindly come to-morrow at nine, when I shall be more at leisure to go
into the matter thoroughly."

I paid him ten dollars and went sorrowfully away.

The third Jones was too old to be my man; so was the fourth; the fifth
had gone away the month before, leaving no address; the sixth, however,
was younger and more promising. I thought this time I'd choose something
easier than pains in the chest. I changed them to my left hand. I was
going to keep my clothes on, anyhow. But it wasn't any use. Off they
came. After a decent interval of thumping and grandfathers, and what I
h